Biblical Hebrew Forum

[MarianneLuban AT aol.com]

In a message dated 8/17/2004 11:22:06 PM Pacific Daylight Time, 
Banyai AT t-online.de writes:


> 
> Dear Marianne,
> 
> you are probably wrong asserting that:
> 
> >Even the ancient historians couldn't 
> > agree just when Moses had lived.  But they were unanymous on one 
> point--that 
> > he lived within the 18th Dynasty, which began with Ahmose I (who fought 
> the 
> > Hyksos) and ended when the first Ramesside king took the throne--that 
> being 
> > Ramesses I.  
> 
> Should you have your Helck, "Untersuchungen zu Manetho", handy you could 
> read that at least 7 late antique sources coincided linking Moses with a 
> 13-th 
> dynasty pharaoh.
> 
I doubt that very much!  But--I'm game.  Who are the seven sources?  Somehow, 
I don't think I can have missed them.

> 
> Insofar could be Manetho´s Tuthimose a confusion with the Dudimose of the 
> 13-th dynasty too.

I doubt that, too.  The text makes it very clear "Tutimaeos" was a ruler 
(probably
of the Delta) when the Hyksos first arrived.  They sacked Memphis ca. 1720 
BCE, during the Second Intermediate Period, a time, of course, when Egypt was 
experiencing a breakdown of central rule (no one king as sovereign over the 
entire land) and so no one was powerful enough to make a stand against them.  
However, even so it was not until about 50 years later that one of these 
Hyksos 
felt sufficiently secure to declare himself pharaoh, taking on the usual 
titulary.  Then, it goes on to say that the Hyksos were driven from certain 
parts of 
Egypt but were not finally driven out until the reign of a"Tethmosis"--and 
the 
archaeological record seems to bear this out.  Just because Ahmose I was able 
to route the Hyksos is no guarantee that they did not return--or were 
different Hyksos altogether.  The term "Hyksos" does not refer to an ethnic 
group.  
It just means "foreign rulers".  It is hardly possible that the same king can 
have both been there when they arrived and drove them out--because they 
Hyksos 
were already in the Delta for more than a century when Ahmose fought them.

 What concerns a lowering of the middle Egyptian chronology, this is probably 

> unnecessary, against Rohl´s own suppositions. Not the Egyptian chronology 
> is in this segment remarkably lower, but the Hebrew much higher as commonly 
> assumed. The probable date of the Exodus being 1622 BC, as calculated on 
> several independent ways. Very probably coinciding with the eruption of 
> Thera 
> commonly held for 1618 BC or so.

Except that everything I am reading these days regarding the eruption is 
leaning toward a later date--around 1500 BCE.  And, of course, the coupling 
of the 
cataclysmic blast of the Thera volcano with an exodus is only an assumption, 
anyway.  There is no way to prove a connection, as matters stand.

> Dealing with a possible date for the exodus within the MBA II has nothing 
> to do with Rohl, but with a chronological option which has till now been 
> excluded out of intelectual comodity. It was too simple to identify Ramses 
> III 
> with the pharaoh of the Exodus on the superficial basis of the calling of a 
> city 
> Pi-Ramesse  in Genesis, (a city with a much longer history beginning in the 
> MB II - the date of its real founding). Instead of asking when the 
> construction of the city of Pi-Ramesse, founded by the hebrew labourers, is 
> attested, 
> one asked after the date of the name, which evidently is no chronologic 
> marker. So did Petersburg change to Leningrad, still being the same city. 
> The whole 
> literature official of the comunist age could however have mentioned this 
> city as Leningrad unaware of the period one had to deal with. 

Well...not quite.  The entire communist period did not last long enough for 
anybody to forget that Leningrad had once had a different name.  But either 
the 
writing or redacting of the BOE was evidently so far in advance that it 
became forgotten that Pi-Ramesses stood in about the same spot where Avaris 
had 
once been.  So, for the BOG to say that the clan of Joseph had been given 
"the 
land of Ramses" in which to dwell is an anachronism--yet still true.  Since, 
according to Manetho, Joseph had served a Hyksos king, Apophis, the very year 
of 
his reign being specified.  The grazing land between Avaris and Memphis.  
This 
is the problem:  the author or redactor of the BOE perhaps knew that it had 
been approximately  430 years between the rule of the Hyksos pharaohs (when 
Baal, also called Sutekh, became the chief god of the Delta) and the building 
of 
Pi-Ramesses--because Ramesses II, himself, declared this on the "Stela of the 
400 Years".  That is one Biblical number.  Yet none of the ancient historians 
looked at it in that light.  Most of them felt that it was 430 years between 
the advent of Abraham and the routing of the Hyksos--by Ahmose.  Yet neither 
of 
the above agrees with the second Biblical date--480 years between the exodus 
and the building of Solomon's temple.  However, here is the second problem--a 
great confusion between Ahmose and Thutmose among the ancient historians--so 
much so that it became a case of "Amosis also called Tethmosis".  But Manetho 
was not confused at all.  Conclusion--there was more than one exodus--you put 
your money in the slot and take your pick.  If you want an exodus that 
happened 
480 years before a reasonable date for Solomon's temple, you will probably 
have to go with the other exodus described by Manetho--the one under a king 
named "Amenophis".  It is at this time that Manetho first mentions the name 
of 
Moses--and not one moment before, even though he knew very well about what 
had 
happened under Ahmose and Thutmose.

> 
>